2. But it’s so deep and remote that it’s inaccessible by ship.

3. Solution: elephant seals!

“The seals went to an area of the coastline that no ship was ever going to get to,” said sea ice specialist Guy Williams. They are intrepid explorers: “Several of the seals foraged on the continental slope as far down as 1,800 meters (1.1 miles), punching through into a layer of this dense water cascading down the abyss,” said Williams. “They gave us very rare and valuable wintertime measurements of this process.”